Mad Men, Season Seven, Episode Three: Everybody Hates Don

In "Field Trip," we’re going places—delightful places, on this best episode of the season so far—and this time, they’re sunnier.

Don curls in his watchful cat-ball in a shrouded, smoky Manhattan theater, watching a full Technicolor blast of L.A. traffic snarls, part of Jacques Demy’s ethereal The Model Shop. (Deadpan TCM plot synopsis: "An unemployed architect stuck in a dead end relationship with an aspiring actress." Eh?) It’s a mid review of the city—dreamy, moody, a road-trip to nowhere—and Don’s own hesitancy about "the Coast" swirls around his head like his cigarette contrails. As Sally, succinct up-summer of all things that are true, could subtitle: "Why don’t you just tell her that you don’t want to move to California?"

Since things are always much more complicated than that, Demy’s set is a spike for Allen Silver, cuff-linked creamsicle to the stars, who calls to beg "manager" Don to put a muzzle on his old lady. Don boards the first plane to see his wife, who is apparently jingling a change cup outside country clubs, and it’s en route that he encounters the first knock at his door: a blonde stewardess, Tricia, being all, "Why are you married again?!" We’re not sure, and neither is Megan—after warm, friendly reunion sex, they get into an explosive fight, and Megan boots him out. The way she sees it, interestingly, is that it would be less hurtful for him to be an alcoholic philanderer barely making it through the work day. Remember in times past, when Megan would be all, "I whipped up coq au vin!" and Don would be like, "I’m just gonna have whiskey and pass out after clammily fumbling your body?" She wants that Don back. This new Don—this sober-ish Don who wants to live bicoastally and regain his job and is generally tepid about managing Megan’s fits-and-starts soap career—can shove it, since he’s already pushing her away "with both hands." Truthfully, we see her point. But in the end, the fractured limbo-relationship Don cares most about repairing is his is to SC&P.

(Blonde-door-knock number two: "Emily Arnett," someone Don may or may not know, waltzes up to Don’s dinner table and brazenly leaves her room number. Clever cut to numbered door—but instead of finding solace in easy company, like Don of yore, he immediately retreats to Roger.)

Back in the office, before Don’s Roger-vetted (!!) arrival, people are sore. Peggy didn’t get a Clio nomination. Lou thinks advertising awards are dumb. Harry wants a computer for Christmas, and Jim thinks Harry is lippy. Bert hates Joan’s go-go boots. Despite the fact that we pinball from complaint to complaint, hearing only one semi-actualized pitch—Chevalier Noir!—the entire fact of being back in the office keeps washing gleefully over us like Don’s whiskey rivers. Mad Men is a workplace drama—the very best workplace drama—and too long away from the patch can make for sour produce. At last, we are here. Here is what we love:

Michael Ginsberg and Stan Rizzo. The only two people prepared to jump with both feet back into a Draper-inclusive creative world. It’s because Lou sucks, and it’s because they’re used to being jerked around by management changes, but it’s also because they’re_ the best._
Don’s delightfully grumpy-ass complaining about how late people get in these days, with their early lunches and their late meetings and the general tomfoolery and hootenanny. I mean, when he was a kid on the farm, it was uphill both ways…
Of course Roger told no one. Roger is absolutely that guy who tells no one. "I don’t have to tell anybody, that’s my name on the door out there—this is my agency," he semi-slurs after a martini lunch. Yusssss.
Harry Crane, finally back after a two-episode hiatus, remains one of the most interesting (to us) SC&P characters. We know his fate, if only because we know the fate of his department: he will be more powerful and essential than any of his colleagues, despite his lack of a partner stake. But his roiling anger and marginalization could mean that, when given proper credit, he flies too high. We can’t wait to see.

In the end, Don’s reentry is approved, thanks to an electrifying partners’ meeting—an adrenalized, tightly written shouting-match in which everybody is at odds. It’s where we are reminded that Roger, out to literal and metaphorical lunch as he may be, is still one helluva a salesman. But it’s also where we see the mid blessing of Don’s return: it’s not that they love him. It’s that they don’t want him loving anyone else.

With his unexpectedly blithe acceptance—"OK," he shrugs—we’re not sure we can tell what Don’s true motive is. Overturn Lou, his boss? Secretly drink? Festively redecorate Lane’s office to make it seem less like Siberia?! Or actually hew to all the rules, a changed man? He returns so formally heeled—as much "demoted" now at SC&P as his competing offer would’ve had him. And yet, hat-tip Megan, he grabs onto the extended letter with both hands. It’s either the beginning of redemption, or the beginning of an end.

Line of Episode: "I wish it was yesterday." Is anything sadder than Bobby Draper’s wistful raking of mashed potatoes?

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